Microsoft needs to stop trash-talking IE6 and just trash it

[karamazovmm]

And now we can move out to try to kill win xp

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/new...m_campaign=rss

I agree with all the tids and bits in it, there is no reason for people to be using software that old.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

XP and Vista are about ready to be retired.

Win7 just does everything better.

[Simetrical]

Microsoft has committed to support IE6 until 2014. It cannot simply decide on short notice to cut the support short. Countless organizations around the world have undoubtedly planned out their IT upgrade schedules around Microsoft's support dates. If Microsoft betrayed its existing support commitments, it would be a serious and deserved stain on its reputation. In fact, it might even be sued for breach of contract, if it actually has support contracts going out to 2014. Is it even legally able to cut IE6 support short? Its lawyers may have made sure to leave it that right, but its reputation for reliable support would still take a big hit.

What Microsoft needs to do is make sure that it doesn't commit to such long support for a browser in the future, since we've seen what problems that can cause. It also needs to ensure that upgrading browsers is smooth, even in the face of horrible internal applications (the IE7/8 emulation modes in IE8/9 should help a lot with this). It can't fix anything for IE6, though, beyond what it's doing: trying to encourage companies to voluntarily upgrade.

So the article is completely absurd. Yes, Firefox and Chrome and so on have much shorter support cycles, but that's because they announced those support cycles in advance. And so they can stick to them. This is totally different from Microsoft promising support until 2014 and then breaking its promise. Heck, it might even be sued for breach of contract, if it's formally committed to support until that date. It's a non-option.

[HansDuet]

Indeed they are.

I work for certain city in Finland as IT assistant, in short we upkeep and upgrade public computers around the city. When Vista came, XP was not ditched. Now we've been testing Win 7 out and there is very little to complain about comparing to XP and Vista. So there are already 1000 licenses and when next upgrades kick in, those are Win 7 machines. I think the fact that public sector moves on shows pretty well that XP is history.

[karamazovmm]

Microsoft has committed to support IE6 until 2014. It cannot simply decide on short notice to cut the support short. Countless organizations around the world have undoubtedly planned out their IT upgrade schedules around Microsoft's support dates. If Microsoft betrayed its existing support commitments, it would be a serious and deserved stain on its reputation. In fact, it might even be sued for breach of contract, if it actually has support contracts going out to 2014. Is it even legally able to cut IE6 support short? Its lawyers may have made sure to leave it that right, but its reputation for reliable support would still take a big hit.

What Microsoft needs to do is make sure that it doesn't commit to such long support for a browser in the future, since we've seen what problems that can cause. It also needs to ensure that upgrading browsers is smooth, even in the face of horrible internal applications (the IE7/8 emulation modes in IE8/9 should help a lot with this). It can't fix anything for IE6, though, beyond what it's doing: trying to encourage companies to voluntarily upgrade.

So the article is completely absurd. Yes, Firefox and Chrome and so on have much shorter support cycles, but that's because they announced those support cycles in advance. And so they can stick to them. This is totally different from Microsoft promising support until 2014 and then breaking its promise. Heck, it might even be sued for breach of contract, if it's formally committed to support until that date. It's a non-option.

And I agree with all of that, although Microsoft has to adapt and to make its partners adapt faster to the change in browsers. The cicles should be reduced, its idiocy to ask for MS to just drop support, they won't do it. there is more but I have the brain dead disease today so... more latter

[Simetrical]

Microsoft offers long-term support because a lot of their biggest customers (large organizations) want long-term support. Sysadmins don't like to have to upgrade things, because that means needless disruption to services. For example, TWC's server originally ran on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, although 8.10 was the latest version at the time. Why? Because 8.04 LTS ("Long-Term Service") has support for five years, while 8.10 had support for only 18 months. We had to upgrade to 8.10 because of problems with the kernel in 8.04, so . . . guess what, the support has expired.

So now we'll need to take the site down to upgrade the OS. What will we upgrade to? Why, probably 10.04 LTS. That will take longer to upgrade to (since we have to go through 9.04 and 9.10 first), but . . . it has five years of support instead of 18 months, so we'll hopefully be able to avoid OS upgrades for as long as possible.

Upgrades of critical components = downtime, instability, other evil things. Much better to stick with known working software for as long as possible. But 13 years for a browser has proven excessive, so I hope they support IE for less time in the future. I'd like to hope five years, but ten is maybe more realistic. Two is not going to happen – they don't even release a new version once every two years.


So, that's my opinion as a sysadmin (albeit a Linux sysadmin, not Windows). As a web developer, of course, my reaction is PLEASE GOD LET IE6 DIE NOW PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE please. Sob.

[GasMask]

TRASH IT

[karamazovmm]

^eloquent

[Top-Tier-Tech]

^eloquent

You expected him to use more than 2 words when writing his opinion?

[Jaketh]

You expected him to use more than 2 words when writing his opinion?

ATI SUCKS!!11!

[HansDuet]

NO U

[karamazovmm]

Nvidia is Merkel Arse! and lets agree folks there is something so wrong with a couple when you can't identify if the arse is from the boy or the gal

[GasMask]

Ati does not suck how dare you.

Im a chrome user Firefox and IE are useless.

[Vaz]

Firefox is slightly heavy, and slightly slower compared to Chrome. However, it's customizability is excellent. Until chrome gets that way, then I'm purely staying firefox.

[GasMask]

Firefox is slightly heavy, and slightly slower compared to Chrome. However, it's customizability is excellent. Until chrome gets that way, then I'm purely staying firefox.

A perfect Post Yes Indeed.

Firefox Uses way to much Resource as for IE its just loaded with so much crap its naturally Slow.

[karamazovmm]

chrome is customizable, I have installed 6 extensions that fits my needs, I don't like to add much more since the more the extensions the heavier the browser gets, specially chrome and ie, since they use different process for different tabs, although it makes the browser crash less, and when it crashes only the page that did the ilegal operation does go by bye, it uses more memory.

aside that it is the more secure browser out there.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

chrome is customizable, I have installed 6 extensions that fits my needs, I don't like to add much more since the more the extensions the heavier the browser gets, specially chrome and ie, since they use different process for different tabs, although it makes the browser crash less, and when it crashes only the page that did the ilegal operation does go by bye, it uses more memory.

aside that it is the more secure browser out there.

Indeed, Chrome has all the extensions that I actually use as well.

[Armenum]

IE9 is going to come out soon. Read a recent article about it. I have a feeling IE9 will be a really solid browser as IE8 made decent strides from IE7. The problem is if your browser is most used in the world, than most computer attacks are going to be made for the IE environment.

[HansDuet]

IE9 is going to come out soon. Read a recent article about it. I have a feeling IE9 will be a really solid browser as IE8 made decent strides from IE7. The problem is if your browser is most used in the world, than most computer attacks are going to be made for the IE environment.

IE8 is horribleeee


So slow. And all the useless extra stuff that keeps popping up really makes my job slower and nervetaking.

I don't expect too much from IE9 either.

[Armenum]

IE8 is horribleeee


So slow. And all the useless extra stuff that keeps popping up really makes my job slower and nervetaking.

I don't expect too much from IE9 either.

Well of course browsers such as firefox and safari are superior to IE8. However, microsoft is genuinely trying to get IE back into the respectable browser market. With IE9, it's going to try to pull it off and may get close. But at the same time Firefox 4 will come out so IE will seems again out of date.